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Self Awareness
Welcome to this second module, where we examine the key issue of your level of self-awareness, why it is so important to job hunting and how to significantly improve it
Tackle the module in bite size chunks, don’t feel the need to do everything in one go and allow plenty of time to digest and apply the information covered
The module includes helpful ‘Activities’ for you to complete, it is strongly recommended that you undertake them to get the most out of the content and the key learning points
Allow yourself time to reflect and take on board the advice, key messages and suggested tasks contained in the module to enable you to move your job campaign forward
This module will enable you to
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Understand and manage change and transition effectively
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Spot and overcome any self-limiting beliefs you may have
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Describe and appreciate the importance of your values
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Appreciate how we learn and its impact on our self-awareness
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Identify your skills and strengths and recognise their worth
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Prepare compelling achievements that catch the reader’s eye
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Consider your career direction and the potential options available
A new job is a big change – especially if you had the last one for a while
Change is the external event, transition is our internal response to it
Change is what happens to you, transition is what you then experience
Transition is a personal and unique journey, involving up to seven stages
The seven stages are not chronological, you can jump around over time
It’s OK to be at any stage, it’s not OK to get stuck in the 'blue' stages
Share your feeling with the people you trust, don’t bottle things up
Self-limiting beliefs
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Are the negative tapes that play at the backs of our minds
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Develop from childhood onwards, they are learnt not innate
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Strongly influence how we think, speak, act and behave
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Often originally had a useful purpose, for example, to protect us
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e.g. 'I mustn’t speak out' previously helped us to avoid feeling embarrassed
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But the negative impact now outweighs the protective value of the belief
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Are unique to each of us, but some of the more common ones are
We can replace our self-limiting beliefs with self-liberating beliefs
Below is an example of how a self-limiting belief can be replaced
Replacing self-limiting beliefs with self-liberating beliefs takes practice and determination, but is incredibly emancipating if you can
Practise the new belief in small matters to see how it goes
Use a physical object (e.g. pocket coin) to remind you of the new belief
Your values are
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The basic beliefs that guide your words, thoughts and behaviours
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What is important to you, one way you judge yourself and others
Values are important because, like oxygen
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They’re vital to well being, yet you don’t consciously think of them
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You only realise their importance when they’re restricted or stifled
Knowing your values is crucial so that
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When job searching, you can recognise the organisations you like
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When 'buying' a new job, you can assess how your values might fit
When matching values remember
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Organisational values rarely perfectly match yours
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Don’t look for a perfect fit, 'good enough' is good enough
We are not born competent to do a job, we learn competencies
We often 'unconsciously' use our skills and abilities – on 'auto pilot'
We need to take a step back to identify and articulate our abilities
By being 'consciously' competent not 'unconsciously' competent
We can then identify, articulate and 'sell' our abilities confidently
Doing so feels awkward, it isn’t what we usually do while in a job
Essentially, the way we learn can be described as follows
Recognising, identifying, and valuing your employable skills is vital
Below is a small selection of some of the skills employers often seek
Recognising, identifying, and valuing your employable strengths is critical
Below is a small selection of some of the strengths employers often seek
How many skills and how many strengths did you identify in total using the lists? Probably a lot more of them than you possibly thought that you might have done!
How many skills and strengths could you have identified without the lists? Probably a lot fewer!
The reason why it can be more difficult to do it ‘from a blank sheet’ of paper is that you are currently unconsciously competent – on automatic pilot – as we saw when we looked at how people learn
Which is why you need to take a step back and become consciously competent i.e. to become more self-aware
All of the words in these and any other lists are there for you to use to start building a clear picture of what you have to offer
When painting a visual picture of your skills and strengths
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You may wish to attach a describing or qualifying word first to describe them
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There are many different ones you can use, provided you are comfortable with them
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The following are a small sample, that you are very welcome to use as appropriate
Action words are important 'doing' words in describing your achievements
Below is a small selection of some of the more useful action words you could use
Recognising achievements raises your self-awareness and self-esteem
Articulating achievements differentiates you from other job hunters
They are about providing strong evidence that differentiates you from competitors
Strong achievements answer three questions clearly and concisely
So what was the achievement?
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Ensuring that the reader really understands, recognises and values it
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Is the achievement meaningful and does it resonate with the reader?
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Is the importance and the relevance of the challenge clear?
So what benefit(s) resulted?
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Confirming the key quantity and/or quality measures of success
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Example quantity measures include – time, money, efficiency, output, risk etc
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Example quality measures include – reliability, reputation, feedback etc
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Will the result be relevant to, significant for and resonate with the target reader
So what does it say about you?
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Demonstrating the skills and/or strengths used to make it happen
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Does it explain why they are paying you to do it in the first place?
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Do the words used generate a clear visual picture of you in action?
'Don’t get it right, get it written' – focus on capturing the key 'so what' info
You may find it easier to start off with your most recent achievements
You may find it useful to print off the 'Word Bank' by CLICKING HERE
Having brainstormed the ‘raw material’ of your achievements, they now need honing into strong, concise, attention grabbing bullet points
This is an iterative process, you won’t get where to you want to be first time, it usually takes several goes to get them right
Once drafted, it can be very useful to share your achievements with one or more others to get their feedback and suggestions
Some example achievements that might help you with drafting your achievements are provided below
Feel free to use any words or phrases in the achievements that are useful to you as well as any of the words in the 'Word Bank' provided by CLICKING HERE
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Project managed a £1.5m office refurbishment meeting all time, budget and quality targets using strong leadership and consultative abilities
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Used excellent networking and communication skills to identify and win new customers resulting in £1.3m p.a. additional gross sales
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Won numerous multi million pound contracts including MOD, NHS and Lloyds using effective analytical and negotiation skills with determination
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Generated excellent customer feedback managing 11 high volume catering venues and 150 staff by being motivational, energetic and fair
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Consistently met high volume parcel van delivery targets with good customer feedback by being highly organised, accurate, diligent and friendly
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Regularly received excellent manager and customer feedback for front desk reception cover by always being efficient and professional
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Designed and presented a new, more informative, Excel spreadsheet at monthly meetings that measurably improved reporting and shortened meeting length
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Negotiated and implemented a new defined benefits staff pension scheme with two unions resulting in a 9% p.a. business cost reduction
We rarely spend time thinking about where our careers are heading
Particularly where the circumstances involve redundancy or other job termination
When we do think about our careers, we tend to focus on short term issues
We rarely, if ever, look at the longer term picture of our work and career
If you want to change job sector, job type, or both, one way to proceed is to
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Focus on jobs and sectors where your ‘evolving' and ‘star' skills are wanted
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Avoid roles that would require lots of your ‘unwanted' and ‘fading' skills
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The diagram below shows what we mean by these terms
The number of ways of engaging with the working world has grown
Each offers a different psychological contract – none are right or wrong
This module has provided
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A framework to confidently manage change and transition
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A route to overcome any self-limiting beliefs you may have
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An opportunity to assess your values and their significance
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An overview of the relationship between learning and self-awareness
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The ability to identify and express your skills, strengths and achievements
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An opportunity to consider your career direction and potential options
Well done on completing module two
Raising and maintaining your self-awareness is not an easy thing to do, but it is the bedrock of successful job hunting and will pay dividends during your job search campaign
The next module will enable you to produce one of your most important job hunting documents – your CV – to maximise the number of conversations, interviews and meetings and ensure that you are knocking on the door of the job opportunities that are out there
Go to the next module by CLICKING HERE
Go back to the Job Hunting main menu by CLICKING HERE